“I am a happy warrior, I’m in battle, and enjoying it,” says Gore Vidal, not long into Best of Enemies, still on an exclusive three-week run at the IFI. Even if you miss this splendidly acerbic documentary that’s okay because it’s only beginning to play out again in the new season of presidential debates.
Indeed Best of Enemies couldn’t be screening at a better time. Not just in the political sense. Such are the heavyweight exchanges and non-stop verbal fisticuffs that it may as well be a sports documentary, or at least another reminder that the language of war is never far from any political or sporting arena.
It was 1968, and desperate to rescue their ailing ratings, ABC hired two iconic intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions: Vidal, the left-wing liberal libertine, was in one corner; William F Buckley, the celebrated right-wing conservative, was in the other. The rest is television history. And not only are their profound ideologies brought to life again in Best of Enemies, so too is the sense of tension and combat that best illuminates any proper presidential election.
Fox News displayed plenty of this on Thursday night. Their near mauling of the 10 Republican candidates in the first of the live presidential debates (not forgetting the seven other candidates who didn’t qualify) made for equally acerbic viewing. Donald Trump, as expected, stole the spotlight, hogging centre stage during the debate and grabbing all the headlines afterwards. And with statements like “our politicians are stupid” and “the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning” who else was going to steal it? At one point Trump also added that political journalists “are a very dishonest lot, generally”, before adding, in his closing statement: “Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t win anymore…We can’t do anything right.”
Now, Trump may well be unelectable for a whole variety of reasons, and properly despised by many, yet there is the sense he’s saying some things that need to be said. If only the same could be said of the two candidates now down for election as the next president of the IAAF, the governing body of world athletics.
In one corner is Sebastian Coe, double Olympic champion at 1,500m, who also broke 11 world records and a poster of whom once took pride of place on my bedroom wall. At 58, Coe has already been down a few political campaign trails, serving as a Conservative MP for five years, before more recently securing and then delivering the modern sporting masterpiece that was the London Olympics.
In the other corner is Sergey Bubka, Olympic pole-vault champion, six time World Champion, who also broke a properly unbelievable 35 world records (17 outdoors, 13 indoors). Like Coe, he’s no stranger to the campaign trail. After the Soviet Union dissolution, in 1991, he represented his native Ukraine, and has been president of their National Olympic Committee since 2005. Now 51, Bubka has already run for president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), losing out to Thomas Back in 2013, and, like Coe, he’s also been serving as one of the four vice presidents of the IAAF since 2007.
The election takes place next Wednesday week, in Beijing, two days before the World Athletics Championships get underway inside the same Bird’s Nest that reeled off so many highlights of the 2008 Olympics. The man either Coe or Bubka will replace is current IAAF president Lamine Diack, the now 82 year-old from Senegal, who has held the position for the last 16 years after he effectively inherited it, in 1999, after the sudden death of the enormously charismatic Italian Primo Nebiolo.
Diack, then vice president, was later elected into the position, although his term as IAAF president has coincided with athletics falling further away from the centre of the global sporting radar, with spectator and elite entry numbers also dwindling, especially in cross country - all of which helped earn him a nickname to reflect that (hint: it rhymes with Lamine Diack).
And now, if last weekend’s Sunday Times/German ARD revelations are anything at all to go by, the problem of doping not only persists but appears to have been poorly managed, if not properly tackled, at IAAF level. The full story of those 12,359 blood samples, and whether they presented any actual evidence of doping or mere suspicions, will never be known. The claim that one-in-three medals won at the major championships since 2001 are tarnished is probably a little sensationalist, and it would be intriguing to know what claims would be made if 12,359 blood samples from soccer or rugby players were ever leaked.
Still, Coe’s response didn’t hold back on the language of war - particularly his claim that this is “a declaration of war on my sport”, and “we should not be cowering, we should come out fighting.” With that he questioned the “so-called” experts who interpreted the samples, plus the way the information was leaked, while the IAAF also questioned the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) over their apparent surprise at the extend of it, as it they should have already known.
Bubka’s response followed similar lines, although he admitted the IAAF needed to be “more proactive”. Yet this declaration of war was against the very people the IAAF should be engaging with - while not a single word was raged against the Russians, despite the increasingly damning evidence of doping involving their athletes; or indeed against the Kenyans, where doping doesn’t appear to be illegal at all unless the athletes get caught. Or indeed a word about criminalising doping, which so many clean athletes - including our own Thomas Barr - are speaking about.
Anyway, Coe appears poised with victory, having already secured the backing of most European countries, including Ireland. With the IAAF’s one-country one-vote policy (which means all 214 member federations carry equal weight), Bubka can’t be ruled out yet, given his apparent support in Africa and Asia. Coe has already promised increased resources for anti-doping as part of his election manifesto, although what may actually have swung him more votes is his promise that he’s already set aside €20 million, to be divided among every member federation, from IOC-generated income.
Only imagine if Donald Trump was let loose in the middle of them, stirring up a proper presidential debate, with the sort of tension and combat that might actually prompt Coe or Bubka to say something that needs to be said. Imagine a candidate who would at least admit the IAAF is in serious trouble, instead of two iconic athletes pleasantly debating each other. Coe may have to do, for now, but he needs to recognise the real enemy if he’s to have any chance of winning even one battle in the war on drugs.
